Would you wash your dishes with a used toilet brush? Would you drive a nail with a pair of glasses? Would you live your life just to get riches, fame, and great memories? Chances are you said no way to numbers 1 and 2, but you may be thinking number 3 doesn’t sound that bad. After all, who wouldn’t want to live a life of luxury?
A toilet brush is meant to clean toilets. Glasses make a poor substitute for a hammer. But what does that have to do with being rich or having great memories? My point is simple; The purpose of life is not to acquire riches, popularity, or to even enjoy life. We will, by necessity, accomplish all of those to verying degrees. It doesn’t mean that having money is necessarily bad, and definitely it is good to make memories and live a life that can be enjoyed. My point is, however, just like the brush and glasses, you were made for something different. You were designed for so much more.
Designed for fellowship
A cup is designed for drinking, a car is designed for getting people and or things across land, a boat is designed to get people and stuff across seas, and a plane is designed to do it faster. We can tell what things were designed for, in part, ɓy their function. Sometimes, we admire the enginuity of people who can reperpose things designed for something completely different. A shipping container or two turned into at tiny home, a water trough turned into a bath tub, a bath tub being turned into a garden bed, a tire turned into a swing.
God’s design for us is always the best one, but sometimes we become unusable for God’s original design, but the good news is, he can always use us for something important. No matter what kind of mistakes we have made. We will talk more on this much later on. But right now, we are going to talk about a part of God’s design that never really changes.
We need to understand one important thing about God before we go on. We need to understand that he is self existent. That means that God doesn’t need anything. One example of this fact is found in the psalms.
Palms 50:12 KJV
If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.
Now what this verse is not saying is that God gets hungry. It is showing that he doesn’t have needs like you and I do. Why is this important? Because we need to understand that God doesn’t need us for anything. He didn’t make us to fill a need that He had. so why did He make us? One reason is for fellowship.
Fellowship with Gold
God made us in His Image, therfore we are His special creation. We are different from animals. Some people prefer to keep company with animals over people. This is an exception and says more about that individual (and what they have been through) than about man kind. Animals are great companions, and they have a design too, but they are not made in the image of God like we are. With this comes a unique relationship with Him. We see real relationships or, fellowship, with God and people in the Bible. Adam enjoyed a walk with God in the garden, Abraham was called the friend of God, Moses talked with God face to face, Ester saw God’s delivering hand, Naomi saw God’s grace and redemption, and the stories go on and on and on.
As God had a special relationship with the people of the Bible, God desires a unique fellowship with you and I. It’s not that He is lonely. He doesn’t need our fellowship, but He longs for it. Even more than we do. We do need it. Without it, we and of all mankind are most miserable. People all over the world through every age have felt this need. That is why there are so many different types of religion. They are all tyring in vain to fill the felt need of a divine father, or attempt to ignore it by fancy philosophy.
The problem is, two can’t walk together unless they agree (Amos 3;3. KJV). Man cannot walk with God when he is not like God. Let me be very clear, we will never be exactly like God. We are his workmanship, we are his possessions, we will not become ‘little gods.’ That is the lie that Satan gave to Eve in the garden and many false religions – even those that claim to be Christian – teach this lie. That was the original sin, both of Satan and of man. God made us in his image so that we could have a unique walk with God. Sadly, man sinned, we marred this image. God gave man free will so that our relationship with him would not be forced, and therfore meaningless.
Unfortunately, man chose wrong. But none of this took God by surprise. He is an omnipotent God. He knows everything. He knew that when Adam and Eve disobeyed, they would die. He told them so. See Genesis two and three. Even though Adam and Eve ended up living long lives, at the very instant that they sinned, they become incomplete. The spirit died the instant they ate of the fruit. Romans tells us “…that by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned. “
We were created in God’s image, but man had corrupted that image. Because we are spiritual dead beings we can not have the relationship with God that He desires and we so desperately need. God, who knew this before He ever created man, chose to offer Adam and Eve and all mankind a way to restore this union with Him.
We will talk about this later on, but if you’re reading this and want to know how to restore you’re relationship with God’s, go to the born again tab in our home page.
God designed us to have a relationship with him. We need it, he longs for it.
Fellowship with man
I don’t think it will take much convincing that God designed us to have a unique relationship with other people. We see this in God’s own words, “it is not good for man to be alone, I will make him a help meet for him.” (Genesis 2:18).
Not only did God make man and woman to have a relationship with each other, he designed for them to be fruitful and have children so that there would be new and different relationships. God wants us to learn about him through the relationships He has created. This is why He uses relational terms to relate himself to us. For example, God calls Himself the Father, and Jesus is called the Son.
People who are not born again are the children of the devil. We become the sons of God when we believe on his name. His uses the example of bride of Christ; a marriage in relationships.
Not only can we learn of God from relationships that He designed, but we can learn about Him by having a relationship with His Word and learning about the individual relationships that the people recorded there had with God. He shows us Himself by the Word and even calls Himself the Word.
People, all people, are important to God; therefore, they should be important to us too. Unfortunately, people are fallen beings. We are imperfect. God still sees us as valuable, and still desires a relationship though. People also have the ability to hurt us. Everyone has experienced this. People are lonely. People can become depressed. We need God to restore our relationships with each other. God desires us to be in good standing with all men if at all possible, but since man has a free will it often isn’t always possible. But, God still wants our end to be right. He can help us get there.
We will talk about restoring relationships with other people at a later date. But don’t give up hope. God has made a way.
Helping others fellowship with God
The last thing I want to bring out about God’s design for us concerning fellowship is that First, We have got to have a starting place: being born again, then, working on restoring or relationships with others, next we have a duty to help others restore their relationships. Both to God and man. We can do this by telling our story.
Some people, like the apostle Paul, found a large part of his purpose in helping people get their relationship right with God. He spent his life and even died trying to share what Jesus had done on the cross. Paul was used by God mightily to do this work, but he didn’t have a restored relationship with Gold until he was well into adulthood. Can you imagine going 30 or more years never knowing why you were created? Many people go much longer and, in fact, many never learn this truth. Billions of people die never knowing God, and they spend an eternity without Him in Hell. If you have been born again you have a responsibility to tell others about God’s love and His work on the cross.
Other men, like Barnabas, help men restore their relation with other men. You may think this is not as important as helping men restore their relationship with God, but if Barnabas never helped Paul get in a right relationship with the other apostles it is doubtful that Paul would have had the same effect on the world. Barnabas didn’t neglect telling the Gosple message, but his purpose was more about men walking in fellowship with other men. God has given different people different jobs. He has a unique roll for you as well.
S. T.
Acts 20:24
"But, none of these things move me.
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